A robot can be defined as an automatic device that performs functions ordinarily ascribed to human beings. The invention to be described here is a table tennis robot that automatically serves table tennis balls to a human table tennis player. Table tennis balls that the human player hits back toward the robot are collected and continuously recycled through the robot to be served toward the human player over and over again.
Prior art table tennis machines include those described in U.S. Pat. No. 3,794,011 by Newgarden, U.S. Pat. No. 3,847,132 by Schatz, U.S. Pat. No. 3,878,827 also by Newgarden, and U.S. Pat. No. 4,077,386 by Berliner.